Brand promotion is the core of any marketing strategy. And event marketing is arguably the best way to promote your products and services.
But what is the perfect even marketing strategy? Trust me, nobody knows that! Because there is no event marketing template which meets the requirement of every business. In fact, event marketing can be done in multiple depending upon your business and marketing strategy.
One of the major perks of event marketing is that it provides marketers direct access to the customers. So, how is it done? What are the critical steps which you must take? In this blog, we will discuss every relevant detail about event marketing.
1. Invest in Resources and Process
Chalking out an event marketing strategy and implementing it efficiently are two completely different things. For the latter, you need capable people, marketing tools, and the right strategy to achieve desired results. It is essential to source the right resources well in advance to meet your marketing goals.
Here is how you can choose the right resources for your event marketing process:
Manpower – People who are working at the event are supposed to meet your potential customers. And you would never want your potential clients to not come to your stall because the people present there don’t look friendly. In fact, you want your event marketing guys to be approachable, pleasing, good listeners, and always willing to help with any queries related to your products and services. Look for highly motivated people who are always to go an extra mile to make the event successful.
Process – The right process plays a crucial role in defining the success of your event. Think about the business requirement and priorities carefully while chalking out the event marketing process. Some critical things which you must plan well in advance are the logistics of the event, how will you capture the leads and follow up on them later, and the placement of your staff at the event to ensure smoother operation.
2. Know More About your Target Audience
For instance, you are planning an event for small or mid-sized SaaS-based entities in HR, but you don’t know much about them. And without knowing them better, you will not know about their needs and problems to pitch your products and services efficiently.
There is one solution to it – track conversations of people on social media who are associated with these companies to know them better. You can use social media monitoring tools like Brand24 for tracking them.
The social media monitoring tool allows you to churn out essential information like where they hang out, their age, hobbies, problems, interests, and much more. It can bring out the entire profile of a person to help you converse with them in a better way.
You can also run pre-event surveys to identify the expectations of your potential clients and what are the problems they are facing with their businesses right now. It will help you plan a more effective event marketing strategy.
You can also segment your target audience.
Focus on demographics including job title, industry, location, etc. to go after top prospects (especially for direct mail or call downs), and remember that location matters. Always consider company location, personal location, or inferred location, like IP address, to ensure that you are sending your communications to the right person.
After all, you would never want to send an invite to someone who lives and works in Boston for an event in Wisconsin, unless your data shows that they have attended events in that area before. But always take this process with a pinch of salt as you will never get 100 percent right.
3. Create an Effective Promotion Strategy
When putting so much time and energy into planning your event, you want to make sure that you do the promotion right. To ensure that more and more people register for the event, you should deploy a mix of email, social media, PR, and other forms of paid promotions to achieve the best return for your buck.
Effective communication with your target audience is compulsory before an event to spread the word and expect a better turnout. A successful event promotion includes a series of promotion activities, including emails, press releases, and call campaigns, among others. The promotional activity also depends mostly on the kind of event promotion you are looking for. For instance, webinars and online events’ promotions can be done online, but offline events require multi-dimensional efforts.
There is also one channel which you would not like to ignore – social media.
Whether it is a webinar, virtual event, or a tradeshow, having someone managing your Twitter presence will keep you engaged with attendees. Also, you can instantly reply to anyone who might have a question or comment.
For instance, Twitter is the most effective tool for marketing and promoting your events. It also helps in engaging and connecting with the audience and attendees in real time. Leverage Twitter to live tweet, engage with partners and influencers, and drive traffic to your event landing page. The first step is to make sure you set up a hashtag for your event to use on Twitter, and make sure this is well publicized. If you are doing a webinar, the hashtag should be communicated by the moderator and written on the slides as well. If you are attending a live event, make sure you tweet the hashtag beforehand and include it on promotional materials
And once the event is over, you can measure the buzz using social media tracking tools and collect the best tweets. Also make sure you post contest results, submitted photos, and thank your attendees for taking time to come to your event.
4. Event Marketing Technology Stack
In the world of digital marketing, every decision has become data-driven, and you always need actionable insights to run your business. This is why it becomes extremely crucial to have the right technology stack for any kind of successful event marketing. From your registration software and billing to mobile apps and email marketing tools, everything comes under the umbrella of event marketing technology stack.
The time is now to shun archaic marketing tools and embed the efficiency of technologically advanced tools.
For instance, a business card scanning app can be a handy tool at events where exchange of business cards with potential clients is a common norm. Business cards are the quickest means to share contact information. But how do you manage the information of hundreds of business cards?
Business card scanning apps are capable of scanning all the details on the card and import it instantly into your CRM. This means, you can store all the information about your potential customers at one place without any hassle.
Wrap Up
So, these are some of the most essential tips that will help you a great deal in scaling up your lead generation process at events.
Apart from the above points, you must also track the results of your event marketing efforts.
Here also, you can use automated software tools and dive into the goldmine of data to capture crucial metrics, including the number of tickets sold and revenue from sales, among other things.
While you are at it, also send event surveys to the participants to gauge the satisfaction level and success of your event.
How do you plan to scale up your event marketing efforts? Let us know in the comment section below!